“Plex — the all-in-one, network agnostic media sharing server — has come to the new Apple TV via the tvOS App Store,” Dennis Sellers writes for Apple World Today. “Though the set-up process is a little com-Plex (snicker), this is a great solution for streaming your own media to just about any device you own.”
“Plex comes in two versions. A free version of the media server software, and a $4.99 version called Plex Pass,” Sellers writes. “Plex — even the free version — gives you one simple interface to organize all of your media: your movie and TV collection, your music library, and all of your photos and home videos.”
“The media sharing platform also adds descriptions, plot summaries, posters, and album covers. It also pulls in information from the Web, including Rotten Tomatoes ratings, related content, trailers and more,” Sellers writes. “The app also supports advanced search options allowing those with larger personal libraries to search by actor, director and genre, among others. Music receives similar treatment with artist bios, album cover art, playlist support and granular search functions.”
How to use Plex in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The sharing capabilities and the ability to play media on all of your devices makes Plex worth investigating..
Snicker? Really? A chocolate bar? Product placement much?
Snigger != Snicker
A LOT of people will get their nickerS in a wad after THAT racist remark!
-Lysdexic Larry
un
Grammar nazi is wrong. First goggle result I found:
noun: snicker; plural noun: snickers
1.
a smothered laugh; a snigger.
synonyms: giggle, titter, snigger, chortle, simper
“he could not suppress a snicker”
Only in the South.
Well, if they would teach less Bible classes and more spelling and pronounciation and evolution … ;-P
Never thought the closest ideological ally of Boko Haram is Texas 😉
That you, Uncle Tom….?
I love Plex and all its features. If you have your own media library it is hard to beat its capabilities.
I’ve installed it, but for some reason it’s confusing episodes of some TV shows with others (e.g., it thinks that some episodes of The Flash, Gotham, and Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are actually episodes of Warehouse 13). Not quite sure how to address this, but it certainly looks like it has potential.
Does it have any way to play DVD images from a server rather than having to rip to MP4?
They gotta fix the subtitles though (they do know about it)…
Plex vs Kodi
Kodi has a upper hand I think with its plug-ins
Say what you want, but while I can understand Apple being open to third-party apps on their products, I think a little more basic functionality should have been part of the built-in OS. In the old days, we expected Apple’s software and user interface to be the key to Apple’s appeal.
Apple’s ecosystem is starting to look more like Windows used to be and Android is now, where you expected to have to find third-party solutions to common, basic tasks (remember the joy that was iLife and iWork?).
Appleworks was my all time favorite App with Apple, so I understand your OS functionality comment. It worked on any level I required of it, whether it was drag and drop, cut and paste, user manipulation, or image import functionality. Pages is still lacking on the import side to me.
Plex works great, until you find an unfriendly video format. Here’s my experience testing it out last night:
.AVI files absolutely suck, taking forever to load and then just stop after a bit. Essentially: no worky.
.MP4, M4V, and .MKV all seem to work flawlessly, wonderful experience.
Other formats I have not tried.
Plex would probably make it possible to have a maintenance free Raspberry Pi media server for Apple TVs. Currently, the only program for this purpose is RPiForkedDaapd, which has to be updated after iTunes and Apple T.V. OS updates, but it would likely get annoying having to update the program every few months.